Go paperless in your entire operations – Terkper urges GRA
A former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Terkper, has urged the management of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to extend its paperless system of doing business to all of its operations.
Advertisement
According to him, using the electronic form of doing business would not only improve revenue mobilisation but also enhance the authority’s quest to seal all revenue leakages.
At a public lecture in Accra last Wednesday, the former minister said Ghana stood to gain more if all the various government organisations would go electronic in all of their operations.
“It is time we began to focus on enhancement and not brood over basic principles that do not reflect best practices,” Mr Terkper said.
The lecture that was organised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants Ghana (ICAG) was on the theme: “Vat Reforms in Ghana: Any Policy Alternatives.”
Developed world
Mr Terkper said in most developed countries, the electronic form of doing business had been embraced so much that every sector was reaping huge dividend.
He said Ghana could learn from those countries and emulate their example because the system in the country was not entirely different from the ones in the developed world.
Mr Terkper noted that with a view to the rate at which the world was moving, any nation that decided to use the old system of attaining its development goals would be left behind.
“Let all of us begin to embrace the electronic way of doing business to reap the benefits tied to it,” he added.
GRA determined
At his turn, the Head of the Policy and Programme Department of GRA, Mr Nathan Nettey, said the authority was determined to implement strategies that would deal with issues affecting revenue mobilisation.
Over the past years, he said, the GRA had introduced a number of programmes at its various centres that had helped to improve its dealings with the public.
Mr Nettey, however, stressed the need for accountants to advise their clients and employers to do the right thing instead of always attempting to use unapproved methods to get themselves out of trouble.
He said there had been occasions when some business owners, after failing to use the approved mechanism of filing their tax returns, used people they knew to plead for them.
“This will not help any of us. Just do the right thing,” Mr Nettey stressed.
